


why do we want the world to end?

by Pink_machines



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, Post-Apocalypse, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2019-12-26 06:57:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18278123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pink_machines/pseuds/Pink_machines
Summary: monologue of oc Simone as she experiences the post apocalyptic world.





	1. Chapter 1

Movies always said that the ending of the world would be one romantic adventure where the few left alive are free to do as they please, but it isn’t like that at all. It’s cold and it’s lonely, I am starved of conversation and I feel like part of me dies every day. The only small comfort I have is a belligerent forgetful computer, who frequently tells me to go fuck myself. He isn’t much for company but he’s all I have. He often reminds me his name is Byte and he despised humans. Every two days, Byte forgets all about me due to limited memory. He considers my company “Non-essential data.” He’s kind of an asshole!  His AI is so flawed, if I ask him too many questions he just repeats the words “Go away meat bag,” until I leave him alone.  As I sit I look out in what used to be a bustling street full of life, alive with conversations in a hundred different languages, It’s so strange to see it this quiet. When the world ended it didn’t come with a bang or a crunch or a massive event. There was not plague of zombie virus or horrible flu. The world just stopped.  People became so wrapped up in the fictions around them they forgot they were real people. Everyone gradually forgot what living was, until they slowly wasted away.  Brain death due to overstimulation is what the doctors called it.  Full immersion games and television gradually took over people’s lives until they couldn’t take any more. I guess you could say I was lucky; though it certainly doesn’t feel that way. You see, while the world’s collective brain was melting, hooked on binge watchable media, I was asleep. Dead to the world, in a deep coma.  5 years before the world finally fell to its knees, I got into an accident. I was playing a full immersion game, when my headset malfunctioned and delivered a substantial voltage straight to my eyeballs. My insurance only covered one eye (I don’t have a lot of cash) so that was all they fixed. I was left blind on one side, in a coma ward, for 5 whole years. When I woke up I was covered in dust.  I remember walking around for hours wearing nothing but one of those assless gowns. I must have looked ridiculous, but it didn’t matter there was nobody around to care. The few I found alive might as well have been dead. The years of media binging had turned their brains to mush. They’re unresponsive, ‘meat sacks,’ to use Byte’s words. All they did was stare at the blank screens in front of them, though the power was long out. They’re all that’s left of the people who once walked and talked on this earth.  They’ll die eventually of something. Some of exposure, some of radiation poisoning and some of good old heart failure. Whatever gets them ,it won’t be the dramatic elegant end they would have wished for. They’ll sit and rot in their chairs like the all the rest of humanity. I am the last functioning person left alive in a vast empty city slowly crumbling into ruin. Old buildings are starting to collapse and untended plants are starting to swamp the streets with green. It would be beautiful to watch nature take over if I wasn’t so utterly alone. Some parts of the city seem almost unchanged. The armada of robots running on batteries that clean and maintain has kept shopping malls and train stations spotless. It’s a strange feeling being inside once crowded places when they’re silent and empty. It feels as though I’m intruding when I step through the gleaming glass doors of a silent shopping centre, or descend the now still escalators in a train station. The silence around me is so oppressive and heavy I’m terrified to make a sound, I’m afraid if I do the silence around me will shatter like glass, into great cutting shards and rain down around me. Sometimes I just stand on a rooftop and scream as loud as I can in the hopes that something will hear me in the ever long silence that has fallen over my home. Byte tells me I’m wasting my time and I know he’s right. I keep a little radio next to my bed it barely works and only ever plays static, but I keep it on day and night in the hopes that somebody will one day I will pick up a transmission. I can’t be the only person on earth there must be somebody out there somewhere in the same situation as me I can’t be the last person on earth. For the last few months I’ve been living off of canned food and processed sweets that didn’t go off. It’s starting to get harder to stomach processed meat and soggy vegetables. I found some seeds in a hardware store and I’m going to try to grow my own food. It’s a nice distraction tending to my little plants, watching them grow and thrive. For a moment each day while I water them I almost forget where I am and slip back into the monotone bliss of everyday normal life back in the world as it was. I would always wake up before work and water my plants then plug into my VR machine and getting to work. It was the only part of my life that was real everything else was a well rendered fantasyland. The trouble with constant wonder and amazement is it gets boring after a while. Nothing was exiting anymore and instead of going back to the real world everyone dove deeper into the fantasy, too afraid to think about how dull their everyday lives were in the real. I did the same I plunged myself so deep into fictional fights and pointless quests, terrified of the boring square room that lay just past my visor. If I had upgraded my setup and averted the accident that landed me in hospital, dead to the world, I would be just the same as all the other people who vegetated in their chairs. Just a piece of meat waiting to die. Somehow I almost wish I had died with the rest of the world, that way I would have died in an amazing fantasy realm full of possibility and never had to see this crumbling silent hell-scape. But at the same time the thought of drooling into a VR headset in my final hours seems like an undignified end.


	2. waiting for light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simone waits for the sun to rise to start another day in the apocalypse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a shorter chapter but I hope you enjoy it!!!

As the sun slips slowly down below the now abandoned buildings it forms a great wall of black silhouettes. The burning glow in the orange sky behind becoming ever weaker, leaving a dusty blue twilight behind, bathing the city in eerie shadows. Byte says it’s stupid and human to be afraid of the dark. He doesn’t understand how terrifying it is to be alone in the inky blackness. My tiny weak fairy lights are starting to flicker as the battery begins to run out. The worst part is night time used to be lonely back in the old world too. My nights were spent alone plugged into a VR machine working my way through level after level of games to earn enough money for take-out food. Almost all of my income came from game testing and streaming.   
I also used to mend clothes for the people in my block who gave me a little extra cash, that was the only real thing I ever did.   
Looking back my life seems like one big melancholy blur but now it’s gone I would give anything to go back to it.   
I hate the silent nights without even my virtual friends for company. Byte is quieter these days. He only tosses the occasional insult. Most of the time his screen is blank and lifeless. I am beginning to wonder if he was ever real at all.   
I sit in the moonlight, listening intently for things moving in the dark. When morning comes the relief is amazing. The sun slips lazily over the horizon and the birds still left alive begin to chirp and sing, indicating it’s safe to relax. As I rise and get ready for the day, the sky gets dimmer and great rain clouds gather over the city ruins. Just as I head out to search for food and batteries the heavens open, drenching the streets and me with them. Raincoats are surprisingly hard to come by in the city, people didn’t go outside very much before the fall so they weren’t really necessary. I managed to find a stash of plastic ponchos and I’ve been wearing them ever since. It feels strange rustling down completely silent streets. As I walk a few robots still autonomous wave and chatter at me from broken shop windows, repeating the same three phrases they were taught.   
I thought about taking one back to my hideaway for company but I think Byte wouldn’t get along with another AI, especially an inferior one.  
Silly as it is, it feels good to have someone to wave to, even if it is a robot trying to sell me used VR gear. Eventually their extra-long life batteries will die and they’ll be as dead as the humans that bought them.   
I head into the massive supermarket, I’ve been raiding for months, to find some tins of food to sustain me for a while longer. It’s getting a little sparse in here and I might have to find a new spot.  
The rain is still soaking the streets outside hitting the massive plate glass windows on the storefront. A strange kind of calm settles over me when it rains, the pitter-patter washes away the silence that settled over the city and makes it feel almost alive again.


End file.
